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Feedback pulse on NPCs
raijinmeister
Member Posts: 192 Arc User
Would be possible to better balance or greatly restrict the usage of feedback pulse by NPCs? It's a total pain when going to the civil war patrol "Strike at Seedea base" when some fed sci ship pops that skill amidst the dozens of ships that spawns there and you end up killing yourself because the skill is completely OP vs players when reflecting your damage back at you.
It's not fun and it's not funny to randomly die because you are too strong and have no way to deal with your own dmg coming back at you.
Unless you are a Sci captain using space magic, then the game is just a silly power fantasy with no draw backs.
It's not fun and it's not funny to randomly die because you are too strong and have no way to deal with your own dmg coming back at you.
Unless you are a Sci captain using space magic, then the game is just a silly power fantasy with no draw backs.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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I'd recommend for the moment looking at the powers the NPC you have targeted has active and if the FBP icon is displayed (which also has a expiry timer) hold fire to prevent immediate death.
If FBP is tweaked, I would want them to revert the complete nerf to the sci power and similar abilities so it's worth slotting again. A game that has less and less diversity because many abilities are part of the landfill of garbage that's non-viable in any way whatsoever is also not fun.
Nerfing npc abilities because your own over-gunned dps is killing you isn't the solution. Try to think your way around to problem rather than expecting your build to do the work for you.
Triggering fbp with a torp spread or unbuffed energy weapons is great advice.
Paying attention is the solution.
It's just that easy
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Last time I did Hive space, I was in my L. B'rel. It has 4 forward DHCs with 2 turrets in back. I saw the message about FPB and stopped firing so the diamond could piddle about for 15s. Then I accidentally hit spacebar. I caught my mistake immediately and deselected my target, but it didn't matter. One volley destroyed the ship.
Is the solution nerfing the NPCs? No, absolutely not. Instead, they should reverse the nerf of player owned FBP.
IIRC the entire reason for nerfing player owned FBP was for PvP balance because tactical snowflakes were mad they were killing themselves when fighting a sci. PvP is dead and gone, so reversing that nerf would not adversely affect the game.
Sure I lose shields and a good bit of hull, but I can heal before I blow 99% of the time.
One solution is to actually go somewhere like the Badlands and fight the Terrans, as they use the same ships and abilities as Federation. Pick up on what ships do what, and you'd be set for fighting Federation since its the same AI. Just different skin.
Also, there aren't only terran/fed ships with OP reflect powers out there. There are also the Voth, Borg and more (battle of procyon 5, don't remember which ships in that TFO).
OK fine, let's keep the OP reflections. But since that's the only countermeasure that can actualy kill a player rapidly - in the entire game - why not change the mechanic so it reflects ALL damage types...?
Reflecting all damage types would defeat the purpose, the point is to know the strengths and weaknesses and use things that will not reflect back at you to kill them. It is the same thing as with minor bosses in other games were you have to work around the particular mechanics to defeat them, though in this case it is a bit milder and more widespread than in those other games.
Adding to what Pheonic said, it would not make sense logically/lore wise for all damage to be reflected. FBP uses the ship's shields to redirect a portion of energy damage back along the beam connecting the two ships (cannons are really just weaker, faster beams). This can only work because energy weapons connect the two ships, torps and most EPG skills do not.
Cannons are not beams, they aren't faster, and they aren't weaker. That's silly.
As I recall cannons also originally didn't trigger FBP but this was changed very very early. It really doesn't make sense for cannons to be affected by FBP as it isn't a beam, and has significant travel time.
I feel this problem is inherently unsolvable, really. Players do a great amount of dmg versus a great many foes that themselves, each, do very little dmg (relatively). Therefore, FBP on an NPC is as good as meaningless. But FPB on you is always a beatch, as your own DPS is designed for tackling the entire mob.
Cannons are still energy weapons.
Right now the only thing you can basically do is trying to overcome your own damage with enough resistance (which just doesn't work for many players because the entire game is designed around dealing as much damage as possible) - or just wait until the buff disappears.
The latter can work, but doesn't lead to more interesting content. Expecting players to wait is also a dumb requirement in missions like Counterpoint, when one of the other objectives is having to close portals quickly.
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
This. If you're going to make a game where 99% of the objectives require the player to kill stuff, it's really bad design to put in an ability that cannot be countered and which will punish players for being effective regarding killing stuff.
Good design allows players to respond to actions by taking an action of their own. Just waiting and doing nothing (not every player has effective torpedoes or EPG abilities on all of their ships, nor should they when that's not required in 99% of the game) isn't playing the game. It's waiting until you can resume playing the game and that's not interesting to anyone.
Besides that, we already have to wait on too much stuff in STO (until reputations finish on new characters, R&D stuff, for missions to pop, etc). When you actually get to play the game, it shouldn't be necessary to wait again with each FBP-using enemy you encounter.
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
I doubt the issue is not knowing what NPC's use FBP (or related stuff like the Voth ability) or when they use it.
Terran science ship use it as soon as the fight starts. It's that simple. So that's not the issue.
The issue is that there's nothing a player can do to negate it. Except using stuff like subnuc beam or some specialised abilities and doffs, which aren't available to the majority of players or ships.
If a good counter were available to all players, then at least you could really use different tactics. Now most players can only wait and sit it out, which doesn't make the game more interesting.
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
The latter - just go do nothing every time you encounter FBP - should not be presented as a serious solution.
Since, while the player may avoid defeating himself, it remains self-defeating logic: a player logs on to play the game. In order to do so, he shouldn't have to pick between dying and stopping playing the game until the respawn timer finishes or stopping playing the game for as long as FBP is active (which can be a long time, adding everything up in missions like Counterpoint or the Terran Battlezone indeed).
A solution that allows the player to keep playing the game is required. Some minor changes to boff abilities like the ones mentioned above, could provide such a solution.
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
This is something that comes up from time to time when there's a miniscule bump in the horizontal difficulty of the game when enemies have some ability that isn't instantly shredded by the less aware pewpew crowd. And it's something that will continue because the games direction is to have pointless powercreep to boost the pewpew factor but only very rarely do anything that might be a decent challenge or counter and require a bit more awareness.
On PC (and solo content) it's not that hard to do a quick scan of the enemy group and pick the potential problems. Grouping does make it harder due to the visual overload assault as the screen floods with yellow and purple vortexes of keech zapping & pulsing away but it's still doable.
But it doesn't pose a challenge. It's merely an annoyance. It requires you to either change your entire build (for example, I have characters that use almost pure energy builds with maybe a single, unboosted torpedo) or to wait and sit out the buff.
How is that interesting or fun?
A good, challenging piece of content that wouldn't necessarily require large investments from the player in terms of changing builds, would look like this:
An enemy uses A. The player can counter with B or C. Enemy can counter B with D and E. Enemy can counter C with D and F, F can be countered by the player with either A or C and so on.
That's how you create a dynamic fight between interesting enemies and players: by making sure that players 1) have to pay attention and 2) when they do pay attention, they can actually do something about it without having to change their entire load outs.
Not by giving enemies an ability that a player can at best bypass at great trouble and huge costs (in terms of time and resources) instead of being able to meaningfully counter it. In such a case, it quickly doesn't matter anymore whether the player is paying attention or not.
I'd argue that the Voth Bulwark's ability is at least done right, somewhat. In that case the player can at least meaningfully adapt to the enemy. (Bulwarks still pose the problem described by some others here, namely that cannon shots already fired will still be reflected even if you stop firing, but that - and the very unclear visuals - is a very specific issue that needs adressing.)
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
So? Cannons function far closer to torpedoes than beams. They are a coherent and distinct package of very high energy, not a continuous beam. If you can play baseball and swing that cannon bolt back to the ship that shot it, why can't you do it with torpedoes too?
Then we remember energy torpedoes exist, blurring the lines further. The only reason cannons get reflected is for arbitrary balance reasons.
Space magic does as space magic wants, but lets not pretend it makes cogent sense.
What we should be able to agree on is that FBP on NPCs is a bad mechanic. It either forces players to sit around for 15s, and can instantly blow up ships with no chance to react to the effect itself due to the absurd scaling of high rank NPCs, or is a nothingburger as the effect can be instantly stripped or even just ignored and outhealed.
Most often I find myself twiddling my thumbs waiting for it to end against something like the Borg diamond. In most other places I can just ignore it. The badlands can be very rough though as with the masses of ships thrown at you, something like CSV or FAW work well there, until you have 3 science ships getting targeted when the damage you're taking in return adds up very quickly. There is no strategy to be had to deal with FBP, its just sit and wait.
It's fine if enemies fight back. What isn't fine is that players cannot do much about it.
Dynamic fights? Great. A good fight allows both parties to act, react, react again, react to the reaction and so on. Do it right and it can make for very interesting content.
That means making sure players can AND have to react to what NPCs are doing and vice versa. What it doesn't mean, is that spamming energy weapons MUST be exchanged for spamming sci abilities. How does that make the fight more interesting? It doesn't, instead of mindlessly spamming X (energy weapons and buffs) you're mindlessly spamming Y (sci powers and torpedoes and related buffs).
Not everyone enjoys just using science abilities or torpedoes. I do, but if they enjoy using energy weapons, then they shouldn't be punished for it. Certainly not if it doesn't make the content more interesting anyway, only more annoying for those who aren't using the 'right' kind of stuff.
'Their fun isn't wrong.'
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
When you're running a maze and suddenly hit a dead end you don't complain that you can't blow up or vault the blocking wall, you try another route. FBP is the blocking wall.
It's basically a challenge to your competence in observing your opposition and planning an attack rather than pressing the space bar and alt-tabbing back to twitch.
You don't need Sci abilities to deal with FBP, you need target and fire discipline.
FBP isn't a blocking wall. Its a timed trap. You could go through it and take the damage, but its going to disappear after 15s. So you twiddle your thumbs and wait, or power through it. There is no way around it unless you're a science captain or happen to be running a very specific intel power.